I’m doing a presentation about a postgraduate teaching and learning project called Values Exchange.

VX is the brainchild of my AUT Colleague Professor David Seedhouse. It is a multipurpose collective tool of critical analysis, discussion and reflection. It is eminently suited to a study of ethics and philosophy.

David and I have developed a journalism-friendly version of the tool – with some gentle tweaking of the back end. It now also has a robust reporting system built-in that allows users to examine each discussion in detail.

One of the VX journalism ethics case studies

This online case study-based analysis and blog site proved very popular and effective.

It ran for the first time is 2010 with 33 postgrad students in journalism, public relations and communication studies in the School of Communication Studies at AUT University.

I taught this paper with my colleague Dr Allison Oosterman in 1st semester.

The launch will be at JEAA on Thursday 25 November at a 10.00am morning tea. If you are in Sydney, I’m sure you can find the venue at UTS.

Alan Knight, professor of journalism at UTS will do the honours at the launch and he has written the first review at his Online Journalism blog. We recorded a brief interview as well. I’m sure you can hear me sipping my way through a Sunday evening steady-reckoner, nibbling on cocktail onions and olives.

Alan said very nice things about the book

Hirst’s new book,News 2.0, asks whether journalism can survive the internet? His brief is broad and his arguments impeccable. But ultimately he provides only qualified answers.

News 2.0 Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Convergence, journalism + News 2.0
Chapter 2: Why is journalism in crisis?
Chapter 3: Globalisation and the crisis in journalism
Chapter 4: The end of the mainstream?
Chapter 5: Is this the end of journalism?
Chapter 6: Journalism in the age of YouTube
Chapter 7: We’re all journalists now. Or are we?
Chapter 8: Never mind the quality, feel the rush!
Chapter 9: Networks, Indymedia and the journalism field
Chapter 10: Who pays the messenger(s)?
Chapter 11: Can journalism survive the Internet?